


No Monuments

by ballantine



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alien Planet, Alternate Universe - Solaris Fusion, Background Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Moving On, Other, Past Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:01:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24952735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: DBA Corp would turn suffering into a service with the right marketing; 'if you want therapy, stay on Earth; if you want to literally drown in your memories – come to Solaris'. But the mission was still years out from full commercialization, and Flint wanted to sink into that deep now.(Black Sails Solaris AU)
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver
Comments: 12
Kudos: 54
Collections: Black Sails Confinement Challenge





	1. A Cold and Empty Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to Feoplepeel for letting me whine and think through this story with her! <3
> 
> This fic was written for the Black Sails Confinement Challenge for the following prompt: 
> 
> "A scientific research station in space (Solaris AU but with a happy ending!). Flint is sent to investigate a space station after receiving some weird reports. Silver is one the few remaining members of the crew. An incident make them unable to leave without some major repairs. Angsty, slow burn, where Flint slowly accepts to move on after the death of Miranda&Thomas.
> 
> If you’re not familiar with Solaris (book or movie) check wikipedia but: the space station is doing research on a mysterious planet covered with an ocean; but that ocean gives the crew some strange “side effects”. Their secrets/fears/guilt take a material (often human) form. Flint sees Miranda (or Thomas, or both, as you prefer) for example. As Flint learns to deal with the loss of his loved ones he grows closer to one member of the crew, Silver.* Their bond help them break from the planet’s melancholic influence, give them motivation to repair the station and finally leave together. *That could be a great opportunity to write about Silver’s (probably very dark according to the BS writers) past!"

_No monuments, no history, just the water._

-Hal Gates

  
  


During the night, in those endless quiet hours he stubbornly stretches out on his back and tries to sleep, he imagines he could be content with morsels. Let him hear _her_ voice as if from the next room; allow one glimpse of _his_ smile on a crowded street. He would be better then, he thinks – he would live the rest of his days with an unquenchable hunger, it's true, but while hunger is still an absence it is one preferable to the void he drifts through now.  
  


* * *

  
Early analysts in the first expeditions to Solaris said there was no interpretable pattern to the oceanic light displays that enveloped the planet. This supposition led to two branches of conflicting thought. One side said the lights were as random and meaningless as Earth's own aurorae, and that Solaris was a dead planet.

Unfortunately for all the people who came later, this was not the side that found heavy corporate backing.  
  


* * *

  
DBA Corp would turn suffering into a service with the right marketing; 'if you want therapy, stay on Earth; if you want to literally drown in your memories – come to Solaris'. But the mission was still years out from full commercialization, and Flint wanted to sink into that deep _now_. It felt like a small miracle when the repair contract came up in his comms feed.

The Solaris surface station's propulsion systems had began malfunctioning for reasons no one on board could discern. Without propulsion the ship was as helpless as a beached whale – except there were no beaches on Solaris; there was no land of any kind. And if a storm developed and crossed their course before the propulsion could be fixed, there very soon might be no station.

In his message, the one that started this whole thing, Gates said: “I haven't told them anything. Nothing except you'd be ideal for the job.”

He _was_ ideal for the job. Flint was one of the best xenonautical engineers in the field. Although when he first met Captain Gates, he wore a different name. He was a different man entirely. The company couldn't know about that man, though, because they had rules about sending anyone with recent traumas and losses to a planet that had an inconvenient tendency to turn memories into carbon reality.  
  


* * *

  
Solaris was roughly twice the size of Earth and a solid cobalt for most of the approach. There was a depth to the shading of the planet's ocean that only became visible up close, when the blue fractured apart into a multitude of ever-shifting twilight hues. It was mesmerizing, disquieting, and somehow terrifying. Flint couldn't look away.

“I don't envy you,” said the captain of the Ranger, the orbiting station, a man stretched tall and spare from a lifetime on low-g ships. “Even with our shielding we get the dreams and the occasional hallucination. But there's no protection down there.”

Flint didn't say, I have no desire for protection. He didn't say much of anything.

The orbit-to-surface pod was self-piloting, so he had little to do during the descent and skimming approach except stare out the portholes at the vast ocean and its shoals of indigo and blue light phenomena. It was entertainment enough.

The crew of the Ranger had called the surface station the Walrus. With its generous, bovine curves and two large communication arrays which jutted down on either side of the ship into the water, it did bear some resemblance, Flint allowed, to its namesake. But it was a whimsical name for a serious place, and he was wary of letting down his guard. Even for a nickname. Perhaps especially for a nickname.

The lights in the pod flicked to green. He was nearing the station. He leaned back, locked his seat into docking position, and shut his eyes.  
  


* * *

  
Since reaching orbit around the planet, he had prodded his own mind. He was curious whether he would feel it when Solaris made contact, started digging. So far: nothing. When he closed his eyes, the only thing waiting for him was the same vast emptiness that had been his companion since they died.

It had been years of fury and grief. Years of voices in his head pleading with him. And now, at last, he was going to the one place in the universe where those voices could be given physical form.  
  


* * *

  
No one was present when he stepped out of the pod onto the open deck, which did not surprise him. He was warned ahead of time of the harsh winds that reigned supreme above the ocean surface; if not for the guide rope and magnetic walkway, he might have been blown off the ship. He kept his head down and struggled the twenty feet to the hatch.

Once inside, he collapsed for a moment against the bulkhead to catch his breath. The planet's stronger gravity made it take longer than he was used to. But still, no crew member showed up to check on their new arrival. He was warned of this too.

“The crew of the Walrus get a bit funny after too long down there,” the captain of the Ranger had said.   
“Closed off, anti-social. It makes our quarterly confabs a fucking delight, let me tell you.”

Once he was recovered sufficiently, Flint picked his toolkit and suitcase up and made his way down the ship corridor.

Built for the eventual hope of customers, the surface station was unlike most research ships he'd worked on. With its high ceilings and bright walls, it looked more like a cruise liner than a floating lab. It was built for crowds but had a current crew complement of only three. Its supreme emptiness felt unnatural.

He came to what his study of the schematics had assured him was the communications center. He would be working in the engine room, but he was curious enough to poke his head in the door. Someone had to be in there.

Someone was in there.

Thick-soled boots up on the console like every person who's never had to fix hardware. Uniform dungarees were rolled to just above the knee. Pungent cigar smoke drifting up from an ashtray balanced beside a very full, open-topped mug of coffee. A mass of black curls pulled away from the forehead by a blue bandanna. The man didn't turn at his step, likely because the large headphones encasing his ears.

On the screens over his shoulder, Flint could see live data feeds: oceanic currents and seismic monitoring, and more charts he was less familiar with.

He frowned and opened his mouth to announce his presence in the kind of tone that used to have to Seamen jumping to attention – but sliding movement in the corner of his eye forestalled the words.

He took a wild step backwards: neck craning, eyes seeking. That flash of emerald green, she used to have a dress that colour, he thought—

But the corridor was empty.

“You the handyman?”

Flint looked back into the communications room. The man had noticed his presence and was twisted around in his seat, blinking guileless blue eyes at him.

“Well? Please tell me you've come to fix the station. If you're a wayward tourist lost on his way to Nila-3, I'm afraid you're in for a nasty time of it.”

“I've come to fix the station,” said Flint, because he was not going to call himself a _handyman_. “Name's Flint. I'm looking for Captain Gates. Where can I find him?”

“Ah.” A strange wince stole across the man's face. “Captain Gates is dead.”

For a moment, he couldn't react. Surely it was a joke – the finality of the words didn't match the strange, half-apologetic expression on the crewman's face.

“Dead?” he checked.

“Mm.”

“The Ranger didn't say anything about this.”

“They wouldn't. It's awkward. Rackham doesn't like to get involved.”

Awkward, he said. Involved. Flint stared at him hard. After a few seconds, it began to make an impression. The boots came off the console, and he straightened in his seat.

“And who is in charge on this ship in his stead?” asked Flint.

“You'll be looking for the XO. Guthrie – Eleanor Guthrie. She should be on the second level, aft.” He looked relieved to be able to give directions: any directions that would sent Flint away from him and onto someone else. Flint was intimately familiar with the look.

He didn't say anything more to the man, merely nodded curtly and stepped back out into the corridor, which was empty. No one and nothing in sight.

“Welcome to the Walrus,” the man called after him.  
  


* * *

  
Guthrie was a name he was familiar with by reputation and a few offhand comments Gates had made over the years in his correspondence. Richard Guthrie was on the Board of Directors of DBA, and Eleanor was his daughter. While Gates had been in charge of the crew and ship, she headed up the research.

Bit of a prodigy, Gates had said; youngest person ever appointed to a senior research position off-world. Regardless of the obvious nepotism, she seemed capable enough. She'd been nineteen when she was sent to assess Solaris's economic potential. Had to be in her mid-twenties now.

“Was there no concern about the what Solaris would do to a mind that young?” asked James – back then, his curiosity was purely objective. He had no reason to want to go to the planet.

“Partly why she was sent, I imagine. She undergoes a full psych panel every month, and the results are sent to the offices back on Earth.”

“That doesn't sound ethical.”

He could hear the shrug in his friend's voice when he replied, “She signed the waiver.”

That was the problem with Solaris; the type of person who wanted to go would sign anything.  
  


* * *

  
Eleanor was a somber, focused presence in the research labs on the second level. Her uniform was neat and worn to regulation, and her hair was bound up into a tight ball at the base of her skull. When she finally looked away from her monitor, her eyes were alert, though marked by signs of stress and fatigue.

“You Flint?” she said, when she saw him standing in the doorway.

“Yes.” He looked past her to the other occupant of the room.

It was impossible not to – the other young woman who sat curled in the corner chair was completely incongruous with the sterile surroundings of the ship. She was made up like someone out of a fashion shoot: artful glossy curls and dark-lined eyes. Her intricate blue dress was absurdly impractical. She was unmistakable.

The visitor raised a hand and waggled her fingers at him. “Hello, I'm Max.”

Flint looked to Eleanor. “Am I supposed to....?”

“You can talk to me,” said Max, now amused. “Eleanor's far too practical a person to get jealous.”

This is why he falsified his identity and worked so hard to get to this planet, and yet the sight of a genuine Solaran visitor rendered him mute.

She looked real. She sounded real. The implications made his heart beat faster; it was almost like those first few hours after they'd died, when he kept expecting something to turn up to rewrite reality, to make it so they had not. Like any moment, he might turn around and – there they would be.

He let none of this show on his face. He said to Eleanor, “I was told Captain Gates was dead, but not how.”

“You've met Silver, then,” said Eleanor, rubbing her eyes. “That spares us all a more formal introduction at least.”

“How did he die?” He was beginning to feel like the crew was avoiding the question.

She dropped her hand. “Suicide, what else? It's happened before.”

“You should all really work on that,” said Max. She flapped a hand. “Life is a gift.”

Eleanor said, as if she had not heard her visitor speak, “Two months ago it was the steward – now we have to take turns cooking. That's a real trial. As you'll soon find out, Silver cooks like he's never encountered food or a kitchen before.”

“Eleanor could take over for all the days, but she doesn't believe in unequal domestic work arrangements,” ran Max's commentary, sotto voce.

Flint said, “So the crew complement is down to you, that man Silver, and...”

“And that's it,” she said flatly, “at least until you have fixed the ship's propulsion systems and the company sends another rotation of personnel.”

“I will likely need assistance,” he said. “You have seen the size of the engine?”

“Right. Of course.” She hesitated, glancing back at Max, who met her eyes and raised her sculpted eyebrows meaningfully. Eleanor sighed and said, “We can probably get Billy to help you, if we can find him.”

“Billy? Who's Billy?”

“Gates's son,” said Max.

“Another visitor,” said Eleanor, at the same time.

He looked between them, eyes arriving back on Eleanor and sticking, because the other option was the visitor, and she was unsettling. “Fine,” he said. And: “In the meantime, where are my quarters?”

Eleanor gave him directions and he turned to go. Max called after him:

“Ship dinner is at seven in the mess – excuse me, that's 1900 hours.”

He hesitated a moment in the doorway without looking back, nodded shortly, and left the pair.  
  


* * *

  
The personnel quarters on the Walrus – it was impossible to think of it as anything else now – were very generous; twelve-foot ceilings and floor-to-wall windows that looked out over Solaris's eternal sea. The rooms were bathed in a cool indigo light for three hours around dusk, and it cast strange shadows on the far wall. He kept checking around him for other people in the room.

He spent about an hour going through the ship's logs, reading up on the past crew – a long series of names and ranks, all ending the same way. No one went back to Earth. The man John Silver, he noticed, had been on Solaris almost as long as Hal Gates.

When his eyes refused to stay open for longer than a few seconds at a time, he stretched out on his back on the bunk. The position made him feel exposed, but it was the only way he could see any movement around the room.

He didn't expect to fall asleep, but he did.

He dreamed of voices whispering inaudibly above him. He strained but couldn't catch a word. Once, he imagined a finger brushed over his lips.

When he awoke, the room was dark and he was still alone.  
  


* * *

  
He was exhausted and weary by the time he found his way to the mess hall at 1900. He stood for a long moment in the doorway, looking with some confusion at the darkened room. Like the rest of the ship, the mess had vaulting ceilings and curved walls and, like the rest of the ship, this design seemed to only accentuate how empty it all was. A crew and passenger complement of a couple hundred could easily fit in the hall, but the tables were all covered in dust drapes. The only light in the room came from the back, where the kitchen presumably was located.

As if summoned by Flint's notice, a dark head poked are the corner. It was Silver.

“We're in here,” he called over.

Flint crossed the long room and entered the kitchen, where he found Eleanor sitting at a small table. She had her uniform sleeves rolled to her elbows and was nursing a cup of something still faintly steaming.

“We don't use the main room,” said Silver unnecessarily. He spoke over his shoulder, busy with agitating something on the stove.

“It'd be a waste of energy, lighting and heating that space when it's just a few of us,” said Eleanor.

“It's also creepy,” said Silver.

“It is also that,” she allowed. She seemed slightly more at ease that earlier, but Flint couldn't tell if it was merely end-of-shift relaxation or the conspicuous absence of her visitor.

He drew out a second chair from the small table and sat. “No Max?” he inquired.

“She thought you would be more at ease if it was just... us tonight.”

“Max has a gift for reading people and setting them at ease,” said Silver.

He tossed a kitchen towel down on the center of the table and followed it up with the frying pan, the contents of which were performing a distinctly lackluster sizzle. Flint could see straight away the man hadn't been cooking with high enough heat; the stir fry looked sodden and oily.

Flint was so busy studying the food, he jerked slightly in surprise as a plate was shoved in front of his face.

“Alright,” said Silver brightly, turning back to fetch the flatware. He walked with a limp, Flint noticed. “Another successful day on Planet Depresh. Cheers, everybody.” And with that, he sat and dug into the pan, ladling dripping noodles over to his plate and making a mess of it.

“And what do you call a successful day?” Flint asked, wondering after the nature of the man's research.

Eleanor said, “He means no one killed themselves or anyone else.” And when Flint stilled, fork halfway to his mouth, she said, “Sorry. One's sense of humor tends to get dark fairly fast around here. We both liked Captain Gates, really.”

Silver shrugged. “He was alright.”

They ate for a few minutes in silence. After Silver's comment, Flint felt no need to maintain a polite face, and did not try to disguise his distaste for the food. A glance at Eleanor's unenthusiastic frown showed he was not alone.

“I'll cook tomorrow,” he said, thinking _and maybe every other day so long as I'm here._ He had no ego about the split of domestic chores; between half a life in the Navy and almost a decade living with Thomas's born-rich ineptitudes, he found it easier to just get the work done.

Silver hesitated. “Are you sure? I don't mind. You didn't come here to cook for us, after all.” He glanced down at his half-eaten plate, faintly puzzled.

Flint thought it best to change the subject. “So where's your visitor?” he asked him. Across the table, Eleanor stiffened.

The man turned to him with a curious smile; it was empty like a doll's. He didn't seem to care that Flint knew it was fake. He shifted on his chair idly and said lightly, “Oh, I don't have a visitor.”

He didn't seem inclined to say anything more.

Flint was tired from the journey, disconcerted from his nap, and now had a belly churning from inedible food. His patience finally ran out.

“That's impressive,” he said, leaning back commandingly in his chair. The other two sensed the change in his manner, and their eyes came up from their plates. “Over thirty crew members have come to Solaris Surface Station since it descended from orbit. Three-quarters of them have either reported or been suspected of having hallucinations and walking dreams, all of them have manifested visitors – but you say you don't have one. You alone are immune?”

“Where'd you get that information?” demanded Eleanor.

He didn't look away from Silver, who stared back with wide, blue eyes. “I arrive here and am told my old friend the captain has taken his life, and you think I wouldn't investigate? I hacked the ship logs, of course.”

“That's a clear breach of protocol—”

His eyes flick to hers. “Somehow I don't think the company will hear of it. And if they do, they won't do anything. So long as Solaris remains unprofitable, the Board will look the other way. You could kill each other and they'd just send along another team.”

He had met Richard Guthrie; he could see from the look in her eyes that Eleanor knew he was right.

He looked back to Silver and said, “Well?”

“Aren't you a one-man battering ram,” said Silver. Despite the levity in his voice, his face was serious.

Flint looked to Eleanor and she said, grudgingly, “I've never been able to get a straight answer out of him – Max doesn't trust him. She thinks he killed his visitor.”

Silver didn't look perturbed in the slightest by the charge. “Max is a clever girl, but her suspicions wound me. I would never hurt her.” He spread his hands and said to Flint, with another one of his strange smiles, “Look, this is a mysterious place. If you stay here long enough, you'll find plenty of things you cannot explain.”

“I'm sure I will. Which is why you'll be assisting me.”

The smile dropped. “What?”

Flint said, “You claim you have been unaffected by the planet's energy readings. That makes you the perfect man for assisting me while I fix the engines. Wouldn't want a hallucination to get in the way of critical maintenance. Do you disagree?”

“Hang on just a—”

“We begin tomorrow, second bell.”

“What about Billy? I thought Billy was helping him?” Silver's somewhat desperate question was directed to Eleanor, who said:

“We haven't seen him.” She didn't sound sorry in the slightest about consigning her coworker to engine maintenance.

That decided, Flint stood and collected his dirty dishes. He carried them over to the sink and washed them, movements unhurried. The other two were silent behind him; when he turned to leave, they were still sitting there, looking at one another in a daze.  
  


* * *

  
Miranda slowly combs his hair back from his forehead with the pad of her index finger. Her generous mouth spreads in a smile – her amazing smile, the one that was vivacious and conspiratorial and unbearably fond.

He blinks up at her silently, thinking: I could stay like this. Let me stay like this.

She bends her head, dark hair tumbling off her shoulder and falling around his face in a curtain. He closes his eyes, relaxing.

She puts her lips to his ear and whispers: “When I first met you, you were so unformed. Then I spoke, and bade you cast aside your shame. I have known you like no other – so I love you like no other. I will guide you through it, but at its end is where you must leave me. At its end is where you will find the peace that alludes you.”

He reaches up to catch her hand in his, but his fingers close around nothing but air, air that still carries her scent.


	2. Gathering Clouds

Even with the temperature controls on the ship, it never felt properly warm on Solaris. Over the next few days, Flint found himself thankful for the thick cable sweater he'd brought, even if wearing it made him feel like his grandfather, who'd spent forty years fishing Baffin Bay.

He brought it up to Silver on the third day. They hadn't spoken much outside of Flint's orders and questions about engine readings.

Silver was at the controls bank inside the engineering room, reading off numbers to him over the radio. Flint was in a harness, suspended over the enormous open-topped engine chamber. If the communication arrays were the tusks of the Walrus, this would be its esophagus, he supposed. If he was to loosen the harness clip, he'd fall seventy feet to the water below. The impact itself might kill him, but more likely he'd be too stunned to swim properly and would drown.

“Are you seriously asking about the weather?” said Silver over the radio, in response to Flint's remark about the coolness of the ship.

Flint was irritated enough to pause what he was doing, brace his feet against the wall and grab his headset. He said, “Please don't misunderstand me – I am not trying to make small talk with you.”

“No, of course not. Perish the thought,” muttered Silver. Flint wondered if he knew he was still holding the comms button.

He continued, with emphasis, “I was wondering if the temperature was normal, or perhaps a symptom of some of other systems dysfunction.”

Silver replied, “It's normal. And you'll find the temperature's actually fine. I think it's the light.”

“The light?”

“Yeah. Even at high noon, Solaris's ambient light at high noon falls on the lower side of the visible spectrum. Makes you think it's cooler than it is.”

Flint paused. “Are you saying it's all in my head?”

It was hard to tell over the radio crackle, but Silver perhaps sounded amused. “Eh, in your head, actually happening – here, there's not much of a difference between the two.”

Flint accepted this response and kicked off the side of the wall again. “Alright,” he said, instead of replying, “Moving on to Coupling 42B.”

“Roger,” sighed the voice over the radio.  
  


* * *

  
Solaris pulses deep violet and he dreams that Thomas finally comes to him.

The fantasy is shockingly real: he didn't know he remembered the exact shade of his pale hair, much less that he could picture it under the ship's PM lights. The dry skin around his knuckles as he brushes them down James's face is the same, his manner of laughing at him with only a blink is the same. He even smells like he used to, impossibly wearing an aftershave Harrod's stopped carrying three years ago.

“Do you remember?” James asks him in the dream, pushing up against his chest, whispering into his mouth. “Thomas, do you remember what happened?”

“I love you _so_ much,” says the ghost.  
  


* * *

  
“Are you sure you should be in the harness?” asked Silver, watching him suit up with a slight frown. “You don't look like you've been sleeping.”

“I've been getting five point three hours per night,” said Flint. He felt perfectly alert.

“Right,” said the other man, tapping his knuckles atop the control bank. His rings made the plastic casing sound hollow and insubstantial. “So – any visitors yet?”

Flint didn't answer him but turned and threw himself out into the engine chamber. The rope spooled out above him for a tempting second before he cinched it and caught himself against the compartment wall.

“I'll take that as a _no_ ,” said Silver dryly over the headset. His voice's presence in Flint's ear was already unsettlingly familiar.  
  


* * *

  
With Flint cooking the dinners, Max started showing up more often than not in the evenings. Her presence gave the meals a strange air of – _normalcy_ was the only word he could apply to it.

She was gifted at keeping a conversation going and, despite her reported distrust of Silver, the two of them covered over any silence with seeming ease. They talked of the research, swapped salacious and increasingly improbable theories on the personal lives of the crew of the Ranger, and occasionally tried to draw Flint into admitting how he came to be such a good cook.

After a week, it stopped feeling strange to him that they all acted more human when the inhuman was around.

One evening, Eleanor skipped dinner. Flint took advantage of the rare absence to ask Max about her counterpart back on Earth.

Silver, spinning a generous mass of fettuccine around his fork, paused and looked over. Flint glanced between them.

“I apologize if that's a rude question,” he began, but Max shook her head.

“It is natural to be curious. I am not offended, it is only – strange, is all, for me to think about,” she explained. “I am her, I feel as she does – but when I think of myself on Earth, the feeling starts to fragment. It gets confusing, to feel anger and betrayal over something that doesn't have anything to do with me. The emotions are so personal, but have no place to go.”

He didn't understand but didn't want to press it. Silver, however—

“Max on Earth feels betrayed?” he prompted.

“Eleanor thinks she does. I would not know how true that is.” If she was troubled to be a creature spawned of hearsay, she did not show it; she looked and sounded perfectly matter-of-fact.

“What happened between Eleanor and this other Max?”

“Max asked her to stay. Eleanor said no and left her behind. The mission was more important to her.”

“Oh, I'm – sure that's not true,” he said awkwardly. To his right, Silver raised his eyebrows at him.

“No,” said Max, with absolutely assurance. “It is. You forget, Solaris plucked me from Eleanor's mind. She loved the girl Max, but she did not love her enough to stay.”

Later in his rooms, he couldn't stop thinking about that: what it would be like to be confronted by a reflection of the person you'd decided was dispensable to your life – but then his thoughts curiously pivoted, and he wondered what it was like to _be_ that reflection, to daily be tethered to a person who cannot look at you without some measure of pain and guilt in their eyes.

He hadn't previously thought was it was like from the visitors' perspective. But Max was so convincingly a person, it was impossible not to consider it now. It troubled him.

But still he awaited his own visitors, hoping. He was different than Eleanor; he was the one who had been left behind.  
  


* * *

  
Thomas kisses him, hands cupping his face like he is something precious. His mouth is slick and hot, greed tempered with infuriating patience. He was always a patient man. It's a more polite way to say he was always a tease.

James isn't sure how he is still breathing, it's been so long since they broke apart. His lips are almost numb. It's a bruise from a thousand kisses and yet he keeps tipping his head, seeking more.

Kiss me, Thomas. Kiss me until I can feel nothing at all.  
  


* * *

  
Silver's line of research aboard the Walrus was, in his terms, learning to “talk” to Solaris. His theory held it was only a matter of reading the right seismographic and electromagnetic data. Thus far he had little to show in terms of making anything resembling a Rosetta Stone, but his work did at least provide accurate weather forecasts.

Two weeks into Flint's repair work, Silver came to him in the morning and said without preamble:

“There's going to be a storm.”

Flint was at a desk, working intently under a magnifying glass to pick out a corroded terminal from a diode. It was delicate work, and he didn't look up from it. “When.”

“Ten days,” said Silver. He waited for a response and, receiving none, added helpfully, “It's going to be a big one. The storm. Should cover a third of this hemisphere.”

“I best make sure the engine's repaired before it hits, then,” Flint said mildly. When Silver didn't move, he finally glanced up. The other man's eyes were worried; he looked nervous. Flint was nonplussed. “Was there something else?”

“I want your assurance that you'll fix the engine in time.”

“Excuse me?”

“You might find it hard to believe, given the track record of this crew, but some of us do want to live.”

Flint set the terminal down. He fiddled with the tool still in his hand and said, “Why would you need an assurance? It's why I came here – to fix the engine.”

Silver hesitated and then, as if he could not help himself, he said, “You haven't received a visitor yet, have you. But as soon as the engine is fixed, your contract will be up and you will have to leave. I think – I think you don't want that to happen.”

“Do you.” His voice was very even.

“It's none of my business—”

“No,” he said. “It's really not.”

Silver's eyes skittered to the side, but he would not stop talking. “—but I think it's worth asking yourself: in this place where one's mind becomes reality, why does yours only offer you silence?”

He didn't look at Flint again as he left.  
  


* * *

  
And there is love, so much love, in his eyes. But there is no knowledge.

“Why don't you come to me for real?” pleads James, pulling at his shoulders. “If you – if you came while I was awake, you could be real. You'd know yourself, you'd remember. And we could continue. It could be like you never died at all.”

Thomas shushes him, cradling his head close against his neck. Their legs are tangled together. He smells the same, he smells the _same_. 

The floor-to-ceiling windows in his room are never shuttered in the dream, and the Solaran ocean stretches out forever before the bed, beckoning. When he turns his face up again to look into Thomas's eyes, his pupils reflect the violet like a cat's eyes catch a surprise light at night.  
  


* * *

  
Flint began, almost without thinking on it, to avoid sleeping. He walked the ship's lonesome halls deep into the night, and found Eleanor sitting up at a computer station. She glanced up and greeted him only with a nod; he looked at the shadows beneath her eyes and recognized the markings from the mirror.

He did not wait to be asked before taking a seat in front of the second station. He gazed blankly at the waiting screen. She said nothing but continued to read.

“Why do you stay here?” he asked her after ten minutes, as if picking up a conversation they'd let lapse.

She sat back in her chair and regarded him. “I hope this is not your way of gently informing me that engine's cashed and we're all doomed.”

“No,” he said, with a slight smile. “ _Gentle_ is not exactly my method of breaking bad news.”

“Then – I suppose I stay here because I haven't finished what I started. To go back, to let go now...” she shook her head and said simply, “No. I can't.”

She stood and looked briefly out the window. At this time of night, the ocean and the sky were nearly indecipherable from one another. If not the for the absence of stars, Flint could believe they were drifting through the vacuum of space.

“If I can figure this place out, make it work,” she said, almost to herself. “If I can make it profitable enough for the company to keep putting funding towards it – it'll be a whole new chapter for humanity.”

It sounded like something she'd repeated to herself many times.

“And Max?” he asked. “Does she enter into your equation at all?”

She turned back to him. “You know, she once told me, before I left – Max, that is, the real Max. She said, this place could not love me back.” She laughed, a little bitterly. “I keep wanting to send her a message, like – guess who my visitor is! But I don't think she'd find it very funny.”

He reached up to rub his dry eyes and conceal his thoughts. He said, quite neutral, “Do you not think the Max here truly loves you?”

She took a long time to answer him. “The visitors are still not properly understood. But I think, so long as I am here and she is potentially drawing from me – I can't truly know what Max feels. One always wants to be loved. It's why I can't trust it.”

After a while, she went back to her station and read. Flint left the lab and continued to walk.  
  


* * *

  
One night as he sleeps, James tries to pull away for some reason, some impulse he doesn't recognize. He says, “I have to check something with the crew.”

But Thomas's expression transforms into one of abject terror. He lunges forward. “No, no, James – don't leave me, don't—”

More startled than alarmed, he steps back through the door and hits the switch before Thomas can take hold of him. He locks it after him, ignoring with flat panic the pleas coming from within the room – _don't leave me, pleasepleaseplease, James, don't leave me_ – 

He sways in place out in the corridor. His hands are trembling with the effort of not unlocking the door and stepping back inside. He'd calm Thomas's fears and gather him up in his arms – how many nights had he lied awake bargaining with the universe:  _if I could just hold him one more time..._

But the strange, desperate creature in the room is not Thomas.  
  


* * *

  
“I must say, you've picked a marvelous time to court a breakdown,” said Silver in his ear. “Truly, six days out from a catastrophic storm and you engaged in delicate repair work that requires you to dangle a few stories above an ocean eight times deeper than the Marianas Trench. Great timing.”

The man tended to be bolder when they were talking over the radio, he'd noticed. It was as if all his wariness towards Flint dissolved as soon as he was out of sight.

Flint ignored him. He finished clipping in a new coupling, closed its panel, and swung back. He said into the radio, “Test that relay.”

There was a pause as Silver presumably did and then: “Nope. Nothing. Did DBA hire you because you were the lowest bidder, by any chance?”

Flint sighed.  
  


* * *

  
That night at dinner, they are joined by a fifth person, an improbably tall and broad-shouldered man with a strangely boyish face. Flint did not recognize him from any of the personnel files, but there was something vaguely familiar about his features. As if he's seen it once, long ago, on a much younger face.

“You're Billy,” he realized, before anyone can introduce him. “Hal's son.”

“Mr. McGraw,” said the visitor, pulling out a chair. He looked just as large sitting as he had standing. “I remember you. You stayed with us for three weeks one summer when we still lived in the Midlands.”

“McGraw?” said Eleanor.

Flint was finishing up dinner over by the counter while the others sat at the table, so it was very easy to look at them all at the same time. Everyone seemed suitably warned off by his stern look except Silver, who studied him thoughtfully.

“It's Flint now,” he said to Billy. He reached for the stack of plates.

“Another person pretending to be someone else,” said Billy, a little flat. “Just what this place needs.”

“Always a pleasure when you decide to grace us with your presence, Billy,” said Silver, flashing him his best disingenuous smile. Flint didn't think he imagined the tension between the two. “It's a pity you didn't show up a little earlier – Mr. Flint needs your help with the engine.”

“My father's _dead_. Has everyone forgotten so quickly?” Billy glanced around the table; Eleanor grimaced a little regretfully, while Max busied herself with spreading a napkin demurely over her lap. Silver looked back at him with his perfectly blank blue eyes. “Some of us are capable of having proper feelings, anyway.”

“Some of us were not so lucky to be visitor to a parent,” said Max, tone light on the surface but carrying a core of steel. “Some of us don't have so uncomplicated a relationship to navigate.”

Eleanor looked torn between impatience and incredible awkwardness.

“What's the difference between a father and a creator, really?” mused Silver.

“At least one of them demands some measure of loyalty,” said Billy stiffly.

Flint, looking between them all, set the salad bowl down on the table with some finality. He'd just discovered the hydroponics station the previous night, and he was damned if these people were going to ruin his first fresh greens in weeks.

He pretended not to notice the strange unspoken words passing between Silver and Billy.  
  


* * *

  
The repair work went much faster with Billy present in a second harness next to him. It was enough for Silver to stop muttering about abandoning ship and taking the lifepods up to the Ranger – or so Flint assumed. He sometimes turned off his radio to get some silence as he worked.

He left it off deliberately when he turned in his harness and asked Billy, “You have been here a long time. What do you know of Mr. Silver?”

Billy's eyes flicked up, as if he could make out the tousled dark head in the control station far above them. He reached up and turned his headset off. He said, “I'm not sure what you want to know. He is capable enough when he sets his mind to it. The trick is convincing him it's in his best interest.”

“I'd noticed,” said Flint. “I meant, where did he come from? His personnel file was curiously light on details. Given that he has no visitor, I found that curious – the psychologists surely would've wanted to study him.”

He'd been thinking of it more frequently, as the days passed and still no visitor showed up in his waking hours. He wondered if they had some unknown commonality that might explain it.

But Billy's face had closed up. “I'm afraid I can't help you, Mr. McGraw. The last time I made a habit of telling stories about other men, I ended up in a lot of trouble.”

Flint hesitated. Unlike Max, this visitor seemed to draw less of a distinction between himself and his ostensibly more real counterpart.

“The Billy back on Earth is still in prison, isn't he?” Surely Gates would have told him otherwise.

“As far as I know,” he said, sounding not unbothered. He reached up to turn his radio back on, but added just before depressing the button, “Right before he died, Dad heard he'd been transferred to Solitary.”  
  


* * *

  
“You're distracted,” says Thomas, pausing above him. He looks more amused than bothered. He always seems so like himself, so long as James didn't try to leave the room. “What's got you thinking so hard, you can't enjoy my ministrations?”

He folds his hand over Thomas's to forestall him removing it. “If I can figure out why Silver doesn't have a visitor, maybe I can find a way to change.”

Thomas ducks his head and nuzzles his neck. “Perhaps you don't need to change. Perhaps you need to accept things as they are.”

“Accept things as they are?” he echoes. “What do you mean by that? Don't you want to be real?”

“I want what you want,” is his answer, so literal it's heart-breaking.  
  


* * *

  
It was the leg that did it.

Silver's personnel file had been scrubbed of all but the most basic data: his entry interview and the mandated pre-mission physical. The man walked with a noticeable limp, so Flint forgot he didn't have the prosthetic leg described in his file – until he saw him one night in his lab, feet propped up on his console again like he'd had them Flint's first day. Both calves covered in dark curling hair were healthy and whole.

Flint was running on only a couple hours of sleep from the past two days, and this revelation makes the lab swim. He reaches out a hand to steady himself in the doorway. As on the first day, this attracted Silver's attention.

He twisted in his seat and looked at him. They didn't speak for a long moment. It was late, and neither of them were sleeping, but unlike the face Flint saw in the mirror or Eleanor's across the dinner table, Silver never looked markedly tired at all.

“So Billy knows,” said Flint, realizing as he said it. “But what about the others? Eleanor, Max?”

The smile that creased Silver's face was oddly rueful, but his eyes remained sharp and wary. “Why would they? I was here before either of them.”

“What happened to the real Mr. Silver?”

“Ah – there was no John Silver. That wasn't even his real name. And his past is just a story I happen to know, not one I'm terribly tempted to pass along.”

Until he heard the confirmation, Flint hadn't realized he'd been hoping his suspicions were wrong: the paranoid product of too little sleep and mismanaged emotions. Now his senses prickled and his pulse kicked up.

“So it's true,” he said faintly. “You're a visitor.”

“I don't know why we're called visitors. You lot are the ones who came from somewhere else. Me?” said Silver, with a shrug and smile. “I'm home.”


	3. The Storm

“Look,” reasoned Silver, “before you get too worked up about it, just know he was a miserable bastard. But he was too scared to do himself in.”

“So you, what – decided to help him along?” said Flint, trying for scathing but only managing numb.

Silver shook his head. “No. No, it wasn't like that.”

“What, then?”

“It was self-defense,” he said. “He tried to kill me first. I don't know who he expected to see when he came here, but it wasn't himself. He couldn't handle it.” He stood and paced, veering wisely away when Flint flinched back a step. His expression closed down some, but still he raised his hands imploringly. “Look – I think he knew what would happen if he tried to kill me. I had all his survival instincts but none of his burdens. I truly believe he welcomed it.”

This coaxing, reasonable tone was repellant to Flint.

“Do you even feel bad about it?” he asked. “Or is guilt not something you things feel?”

Silver's eyes tightened at being called a thing. His smile came out, brandished like a shield.

“Guilt goes away, if you let it,” he said.

He looked – so very real and imperfect, from the small coffee stain on his collar to the uneven line of stubble on his neck. Flint's body and mind were in disagreement over what stood in front of him, man or creature. Either made his pulse beat more quickly, but perhaps for different reasons.

Silver looked down and away. He ran his fingers lightly over the control unit. His thick rings winked in the display light.

He said quietly, “Every moment that man was alive, his memories were – _pouring_ into me. And I didn't want them – I never asked for them. I didn't ask to _be_ here. I thought, why should I have to live with his pain?” He looked up, eyes wide and oddly bright. “And right on the heels of that thought came the next: why should he?”

By far the worst feeling was the understanding that came over Flint in that moment. He didn't want to admit it to himself or Silver that he could see any merit or reason in what he had done. But Silver was most convincing when he stopped trying to convince, when he just – was.

“Is that what you tell yourself, that it was a mercy?” he rasped out, resisting the pull of empathy.

Silver nodded, and then nodded again, more definitely, like a motor starting up and kicking over “Yeah, you know, I do. I do. He chose to come here, knowing what this place was. What it does. In a way, I don't have to tell myself anything – he already did. All who come here do.” His titled his head, challenging. “Why did _you_ really come here, Mr. Flint?”

Flint didn't answer. He backed out of the room slowly, keeping his eyes on Silver's. He'd been wrong before – those blue eyes weren't empty, they were just full of something he could not comprehend.  
  


* * *

  
Miranda curls around him and lays her head in his lap, her dark hair spilling over his fingers. She studies him and smiles.

“Almost there,” she says.

He is afraid he knows what she means. “What if I don't want to be?”

She cups his face. “You can't exist in this state forever. You weren't meant to – one way or another, James, you will move on. The only question is which way you're going to go: forward, or down.”  
  


* * *

  
When he met Silver in the engine room the next day, they watched each other warily for a long time over the control panel. Flint's harness was waiting for him by the access panel to the chamber, but he made no movement yet to put it on.

“You haven't told them yet,” said Silver.

“I haven't decided what to tell them,” he said, and watched that sink in. He gestured to the access panel. “Will I be able to trust you won't cause an accident while I'm out there?”

Silver sat down in the control panel chair and kicked back, folding his arms across his chest. “I haven't decided what to do.”

Flint smirked slightly, acknowledging. He picked up the harness anyway. Behind him, Silver muttered _Jesus Christ._ It was perfectly likely he didn't know what those words even meant, but they sounded heartfelt anyway.

It was not much of a gamble, he figured. Silver killed to survive before; Flint didn't think he'd murder the only person who could fix the engine.

“Like, I said before: a one-man battering ram,” said Silver in his ear after Flint had lowered himself in the harness outside. He sounded almost impressed.  
  


* * *

  
“Forty hours until the storm hits,” said Eleanor, uncompromising at the dinner table.

Flint set the main dish down in the center – he called it _space man's beef bourguignon_ , but only in the privacy of his own head – and took measure of the anxiety levels among the other occupants of the room.

“It's mostly done,” he said. And: “Where's Billy? He didn't show to work today.”

“Oh, he comes and goes,” said Max. She glanced between the other two. “Mostly... goes. We don't know where he hides out.”

“He's never around when he might actually be useful,” said Silver. He hadn't looked at Flint since he came into the kitchen. It appeared as if he was waiting to see if Flint would expose him to the others.

It was strange; he owed Silver nothing. Undoubtedly, some loyalty or survival instinct of the species should kick in and demand he tell Eleanor the truth about her fellow crew member.

Something held him back.  
  


* * *

  
The open sky above the engine chamber was a deep mauve. It hadn't looked properly like daylight since midmorning.

“That was impressive, last night – you seemed unconcerned about the fate of the Walrus.”

Flint said nothing.

Silver continued, “As I understand it, you are not a murderous man, nor do I gather from your own personnel file – yes, two can break that regulation, thank you very much... you don't seem like you are a negligent man either. So what are you doing?”

“I'm seeming unconcerned,” he said. He heard Silver's snort over the headset, hastily cut off, and his mouth hooked into a small smile, safely unseen a couple stories below the other man. Then he decided to relent a little and said, “The repairs are going to get done. But I don't see how it will help anyone on board this ship if I walk around looking panicked about it.”

It was easier talking like this. Silver's voice in his ear was at once immediate, intimate – and abstracted enough that he didn't hesitate to speak frankly. In a way, he felt like he was talking directly to Solaris, trying to explain himself to the unknown depths of the ocean waiting beneath his feet.

He worked in silence for another twenty minutes. He would like to say he forgot the other man was there, except he thought about him every time his harness creaked.

“You didn't tell them about me,” said Silver eventually. Flint could hear the click of his rings tapping on the console. “Why?”

Flint paused in his work. The details of the open engine panel before him faded as he considered the question. He pictured Silver above him, leaning over the control panel, perhaps smoking one of those disgusting cigars he requisitioned from Earth. (He'd never been to Earth, and who knew what his memories contained; maybe he didn't realize humans had stopped smoking indoors two centuries ago?)

“Your memories, what you have from your – ” he almost said original, but changed his mind, “counterpart.”

Silver said cautiously, “Yes?”

“Was there anything good in them?” Surely something had to be, for Silver to cling to life with such determination.

It took a long time for him to reply. “It's not – they aren't like a file system I've downloaded. I'm not a computer, I can't search them. But sometimes I'll see something, or something will happen, and I'll just remember, oh, yes, this is like right before I shattered my kneecap. Except it wasn't my kneecap. My kneecap's just fine.” He paused and cleared his throat. “But the uh, the good stuff works the same. I can't _picture_ the hiking the South American Transcontinental Aqueduct, but I remember feeling the ache in my muscles, how I'd never smelled such thick vegetation before. Still haven't, I suppose.”

Flint, swinging over the man's home planet – a planet with no land and no forests – tried to imagine how that would feel.

“And I've never seen your constellations,” said Silver, “but I remember feeling my hand being taken to trace the Plough. Some nights, if I've had a few drinks, I'll catch myself looking for it.”

He misses it, Flint realized. He misses a place he's never been. Suddenly he realized he wasn't talking to Solaris at all, really. He was talking to John Silver. Whoever that was.

“Are you looking for a reason not to turn me over?” asked Silver, low.

Flint was almost clumsy as he reached for his headset. He shook his head and blinked at the engine panel, trying to remember where he was in the work.

“Surely every word you've said here has been geared at that goal,” he said. “You want me to think of you like a person.”

Silver laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound. “It's a tall order, I know. You barely seem to think of yourself as a person.”

Flint, unheard, hissed out a breath.

“But who knows,” he continued, “maybe do us both a favor and give it a go.”  
  


* * *

  
The sun was well down and he'd been operating by headlamp for two hours when he climbed back into the control tower and said, “Test the relays.”

Silver looked away from him and, bracing himself, flicked the long series of switches. The entire panel flashed green.

“That's good, right?” said Silver.

“We'll see. Fire up the third and fourth propulsion units.”

Silver took a moment to locate the right controls. Flint stepped forward, thinking to brush him aside and do it himself, but was waved off.

“I was born here,” was the irritated statement. “I think I can figure it out, thanks.”

Flint didn't know how it had become such a casual topic to be referenced so quickly. He suspected part of the fault lay in his unwillingness to tell the others about it. It apparently took very little for Silver to feel welcome.

The warm-up would take almost twenty minutes, but the activity in the propulsion units could be felt almost immediately throughout the ship.

“ _That's_ good?” Sidelong checking with Flint.

“Good,” he confirmed.

“Oh, thank fuck for that.” Silver stood and stretched with a long groan. There wasn't a cuff to his uniform jumpsuit that wasn't rolled up, and the movement pulled the fabric taut against his hips and chest.

“You'd think you were the one working out there for thirteen hours,” said Flint, tone aiming for dry to match the feeling in his throat. He busied himself with extricating his limbs from the harness.

“Spent the better part of a day sitting in that chair, staring a row of switches and lights. I'm allowed to feel relieved it's done.”

Flint glanced over his shoulder, brow skeptical. “You expect me to believe you didn't bring some manner of distraction?”

“Who needs a distraction with your riveting surly silence over the radio?” Silver lasted two seconds before admitting, “Alright, I brought a book.”

He hooked the harness up in the utility closet and said, back turned and very casual, “What book?”

Silver sounded cautious. “Well – looks like we missed dinner. How about I make us something in the kitchen and tell you about it. As a thanks for you not using the ship as an elaborate, indirect means of killing yourself, I mean.”

_Forward, James_ , said the voice in his head. He could no longer tell if it belonged to Miranda.

“If you want to thank me,” said Flint, turning to him. “You'll let me handle the cooking.”  
  


* * *

  
Flint stood on the observation deck. It was the middle of the night, and the storm clouds had obliterated the stars. He watched the dark, increasingly restless water and thought not much about anything at all.

“So, have you given up?” asked Max, stepping out of the doorway and joining him on the deck.

When he glanced at her, she was looking ahead at the horizon, like she could make out its exact position despite the lack of light. And maybe she could. Who knew what the visitors saw when they looked upon Solaris.

“Didn't you hear Eleanor's announcement? I fixed the ship.”

Her face smoothed into a smile. “I meant, on your visitors.”

“I wasn't aware it was up to me. If it was, surely they would've shown up on my first day here.”

“I heard you and Silver in the kitchen. You were laughing – there's not often much socializing here. Sometimes I think it is the loneliness that makes Solaris sends us forth.”

He couldn't reply for a moment.

“Is it that you are finally moving on?” she asked, “or that you do not think we visitors are something worth waiting for?” _Worth loving_ , her tone asked.

He remembered that she did not know of Silver's true nature. Then he wondered why he should think of that now. He shifted uneasily in the privacy of his own head.

“If things are so uneasy between Eleanor and yourself – have you ever thought about leaving here?” he asked her, instead of answering the question.

“You must know the company has forbidden the transportation of visitors from this solar system. They are waiting for Eleanor to complete Phase 2 before they'll bring any of us to Earth to... study.”

She had a remarkable way of stating impossibly ugly truths in a delicate and calm manner. You'd never know they bothered her at all.

“But you don't have to stay down here,” he said. “You could go up to the Ranger. They have a complement triple the Walrus. Perhaps you'd make friends. You visitors can do that, can't you,” he asked, tone rhetorical but something in him increasingly desirous to know, “make friends with someone you're not connected to through Solaris, I mean.”

She looked at him, thoughtful. “Yes,” she said. “We can make friends.”  
  


* * *

  
He awoke a few hours into a dreamless sleep to the first lashings of the storm at his windows. He felt groggy and strange, and didn't understand why he was awake until he realized something was wrong with the ship. The walls and floor were still to the touch; the engine was off again.

He threw himself off the bed and reached for his boots, already comming Eleanor.

“We were just about to fetch you,” she said without greeting.

“What the fuck happened,” he said tersely. As soon as his boots were laced, he took off out of his room at a sprint, headed for the engine control room.

“Electricmagnetic activity spiked just after four this morning,” she said. “The ship's computers were monitoring it. Silver was alerted ten minutes before a charge hit the engine tower. It overloaded something. Now we're dead in the water.”

“I'm on it.”

Silver was already there when he arrived and turned from the control panel the moment he rushed into the room. To his credit, he looked tensed but not panicked; there might have been panic in his eyes, but Flint was too well-trained in emergencies to distract himself by looking.

“It's bad out there,” said Silver unnecessarily, as Flint immediately reached for the harness. “Are you sure this isn't something you can fix inside? Bypass – something?”

He stepped through the harness and hauled it up around his hips, hands swiftly tightening the straps. He pulled the rest over his shoulder. “You don't know anything about this type of ship engine and it shows.”

Silver retorted, “My counterpart knew a little about spaceships, and most of them don't require you to step into the black to fix an electrical problem.”

“This isn't a spaceship. It was built on a planet, it was meant to run on a planet.” He stepped towards the access panel to the chamber.

“...Flint.”

Blinking, mind already outside and irritated at being tugged back in, he looked back. Silver tried to meet his eyes and failed; he kept glancing out to the chamber, and the slice of storm in the sky visible above. His ringed hand danced restlessly over the edges of the control panel, like he was trying to ground himself. He didn't say anything more. Like he couldn't.

Some long forgotten instinct rose up in Flint, and he said, a shade of bewildered in his tone, “I'll be careful.”

And he went out into the storm.  
  


* * *

  
Flint fell through the air. He was not dreaming.

The harness cable had disintegrated into nothing by the lightning strike. Weeks of looking up at this slender lifeline and he wasn't prepared for the shock or dread he felt when it was shorn free.

The engine chamber passed in a blur of grey and white – Silver was shouting in his ear—

He hit the cold water of Solaris.  
  


* * *

  
He was right; he was too dazed to swim. Part of his brain knew he needed to kick and struggle, but the rest wouldn't cooperate. James sank down into the dark, the light from the Walrus's engine room a dwindling spotlight far above.

It was a bit like dreaming, dying.

He drifted, weightless and cradled by the water, the water that surrounds everything. It was endless and if he could just let himself join it... let go. After all, he didn't feel much. It didn't even hurt. Shouldn't it hurt?

 _Oh, no. No, my darling,_ said Miranda. _Not like this._ Her lips brushed his ear. Hands gripped his hips. His hands.

He turned in the water, slowly, like he was treading and not sinking.

Thomas and Miranda were there. They drifted with him, clothing and hair ruffled by the water. They seemed lit from within, both alive and perfectly alien. The luminance of their skin cast dappling shadows in the ocean current surrounding them.

Flint could not speak, because he was drowning. But their voices reached his darkening mind.

_James, this isn't for you. You must fight. You must live._

I miss you, he wanted to say; but he couldn't, because he was drowning.

_We will try to help you, but you have want it too. You must kick, James._

I think about you every day, he wanted to say; but he couldn't, because he was drowning.

Thomas smiled and cupped his face. His pale hair looked almost like a halo. He leaned in and pressed his lips to his, pushed his mouth open and breathed a lungful of shocking warm air into his body. James jerked in the water, precious bubbles of air escaping and flying upwards.

 _You can't remember us if you're dead, silly,_ said Thomas.

He and Miranda gripped his arms and pushed him upwards, towards the distant light of the surface. Clumsily, he finally began to cooperate; his legs kicked out, his hands clawed up through the water, reaching, reaching.

It took him a few seconds to realize they weren't coming with him. He kicked and looked down at their bright, loving faces, upturned to watch him go. A sob built and caught in his chest. But he turned back towards the surface.

A splash of impact as something dove into the water above him: there was a shadow blocking the light. It was a person.

John Silver reached out for him. He fumbled to take hold of James's arms and hauled him up to the air and the storm-wracked world of the living.  
  


* * *

  
Solaris turns and subsides into a calm lavender haze, and he dreams Silver is sitting at his bedside. He is holding his hand; the metal of his rings are warm to the touch.

When Flint blinks over at him, he looks a little relieved.

“The company might let you stay, if you want,” says Silver, casually. “Cheap bastards will probably try to negotiate you down on salary, though.”

“Am I dreaming?” asks Flint. He tightens his grip on the other man's hand, but it feels real, the dreams have always felt so real. He raises his head to look around the room. In the pale light, it could almost be Earth.

“How am I supposed to know? I've never been able to tell the difference.” Silver cocks his head and regards him thoughtfully, his blue eyes warm. “Maybe _I'_ m dreaming.”

“Alright.”

“Alright?”

“You can be the dreamer.” He drops his head back on the pillow. “I have to go back to Earth.”

Silver's smile fades from his eyes before disappearing from his mouth. Flint watches it and says, slow and deliberate, “I have other equipment and personal affects I want here. I mean, I only brought the one bag.”

The cloud lifts. “Oh.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he agrees. He glances down at their joined hands. This could all still be a dream. And if it is a dream... he switches his grip and pulls, lightly.

Despite his habit of arguing with Flint, Silver turns out to be quite biddable in the right mood. He allows himself to be tugged onto the bed, looking bemused and amused and maybe also a little hopeful. He settles on his side, propping his head upon his elbow.

“Would you want to come along?” Flint asks him. “See Earth, I mean. Maybe make some memories of your own there.”

Silver pretends to consider it, but Flint thinks mostly to hide how pleased his is.

“Will I get to see the Plough?” he asks.

“The – yes. Any night. We'll have to go somewhere where it won't be overcast or too heavy with the light pollution.” He pauses. “So – all of England's out. But yes.”

“It's a stupid name for a constellation.”

“You could always call it by its proper name, you know. Ursa Major.”

“What even is a 'plough'?” Silver asks, ignoring this.

“Well, they don't look like that anymore, but it a tool used to turn over earth.”

“Earth?”

“Dirt.”

“I've never touched dirt,” He muses. “What's it like?”

Flint turns his face towards his, not quite touching, and closes his eyes. He says into the darkness, “It's warm, sometimes, up top. Cooler the further down you go. It's like water, in that respect.”

He hopes it isn't a dream.


End file.
